Fire Read Free Page A

a one as I have scented only one place before. You will have smelled it too.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘On a battlefield. In the late king’s wars, you may have fought for Parliament and I for the King, but I wager our comrades smelled exactly the same going into a fight for the first time. I know I did. It is the scent of terror,’ he nodded, ‘and this man reeks of it.’
    They rounded the corner and were gone.
    Had Pitman not been so distracted he would have noticed something in the alley – for he was famed for his seeing of even the smallest detail. And this was not even that small, truly. A mannear as large as the thief-taker, leaning against the wall, unbuttoned. A man engaged in the act of pissing yet voiding nothing. A man who tucked himself away now, buttoned his breeches and followed, at a steadier pace, those three who hurried to the theatre. The ones he’d spotted immediately in the tavern as they looked elsewhere – for he had a good eye for an enemy, born of the experience of having had so many.
    He need not hurry, knowing he had ten minutes before the new rendezvous he’d arranged in a swift whisper with the man who – he had to agree with the government toady – smelled none so well. Though he wished the time were shorter so that he could relieve himself of the large metal ball that pressed against his spine.
    Shifting it a little, the man known as Homo Sanguineus walked slowly towards a royal death.

2

PLAYHOUSE GHOSTS
    ‘Do you see nothing there?’ he screamed, arm flung out, eyes wide in terror.
    Sarah knew what to say. Knew that she was meant to deny the ghost – and she could not. Because there was one there – the ghost of a man who was not dead. The ghost of William Coke.
    Thomas Betterton, his arm still thrust before him to ward off the spirit, looked down at her upon the bed. His eyes narrowed.
    Speak, she thought, and still couldn’t. Not when it wasn’t Bill Tarbuck the actor gazing at her from the far side of the stage but the man she loved. The man whose child she carried, who had left their bed not three hours before. His eyes, that had always held pain deep within them, were clear of it now. He even had a slight smile upon his lips. In another moment perhaps his laugh would come – so rare, and doubly prized for its rarity. But what made the apparition even stranger was that he was not dressed as he had been when he left her that morning. Then he had been attired in his customary black – while his spirit was bare-footed, wore a patched grey shirt, knee-length breeches, every item as soaked and dripping as his hair.
    ‘Mrs Chalker!’
    She couldn’t look away. Not yet. Not when the spirit was turning and she saw…that the right side of his face was freshly scarred.
    ‘Ah!’ She could not help her cry.
    ‘No!’ Betterton slammed his hand onto the bedpost. ‘You are not meant to see him. Only I am! You know this!’
    Sarah forced her gaze up. From the grey, calm eyes of the man she loved to the black and angry ones above her.
    ‘Are you pausing for effect, madam?’ Betterton continued. ‘I forbid it. I have told you – this exchange must build swiftly to the point of the ghost’s exit,’ he hissed. ‘ ’Tis why we are rehearsing this bit – yet again! – with the doors of the playhouse to be opened in a moment to admit the audience. To admit the king, damn me.’ All restraint went. ‘For the love of God, ye dumb whore, just say your fucking line!’
    It was as if he’d slapped her and, by the way he waved his hands, he looked as if he ached to do so in more than foul words. It made her take a breath – another, yet deeper. The first restored her to the place and time she was. The second mastered her anger: there was no good to be gained from fighting with the leader of the company, however insulting. Not with his new production of
Hamlet
about to open in half an hour.
    Her third breath, the deepest yet, allowed her to look across to where Coke’s ghost had